Robyn Urback: Backlash has already begun against alleged discriminatory bridal shop. Leave the Human Rights Commission out of it

Rohit Singh is already seeing justice for bridal shop discrimination

Canada’s favourite provincial pseudo-courts are poised to receive another case of injustice. In what will surely help its ongoing quest to reinforce its own relevancy, a human rights commission — this time, in Saskatchewan — will be receiving a formal complaint from a transgender Saskatoon woman who was refused service at a local bridal shop when she arrived to try on wedding dresses.

Rohit Singh told CBC News that she asked to try on an outfit at Jenny’s Bridal Boutique for an upcoming wedding. The owner refused, and according to Singh, said, “Sorry, we don’t allow men to wear dresses here.” Singh corrected the woman, saying, “I’m not a man, I’m transgender.”

When contacted by the CBC, the bridal shop’s owner, Jenny Correia, stood by her decision to not permit Singh to try on dresses in the shop. “To me it doesn’t matter,” she said. “He looked like a man. There was [sic] quite a few brides in the store. If you see a man trying on dresses, you’re going to feel uncomfortable.”

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Correia’s position is boneheaded both in terms of business strategy and common decency, and is only exasperated by the fact that she continues to refer to Singh using male pronouns. Indeed, Singh likely has a case under the Saskatoon Human Rights Code, which bars “discrimination against any person or class of persons with respect to the accommodation, services or facilities to which the public is customarily admitted. “

But if Singh is looking for a little justice — and rightfully so — filing with the Saskatchewan Human Rights Commission will culminate to little more than a drawn-out, expensive gesture of disapproval. Indeed, she has already done the best thing she can do in response to discrimination at Jenny’s Bridal: she has gone public with its name.

True, the Commission might — say, five years down the line, if the hustle of similar Commission cases is any indication — reach a decision whereby Correia is forced to pay damages and adhere to some sort of official dress-trying-on-inclusion policy. (It wouldn’t be so absurd coming from a body that has actually ordered guilty parties to “say they’re sorry.”) But I think it’s safe to wager that Jenny’s Bridal will suffer some capital losses just by way of Singh dropping its name in this context. Correia’s own remarks aren’t helping the business much, either.

Singh has also said that by filing a complaint, she hopes to spare another transgender woman the embarrassment of being denied service at the boutique. But chances are, much of the LGBTQ community in Saskatoon already knows Jenny’s Bridal’s address. Indeed, a protest was already held outside the store on the weekend. Going through the Commission to force some sort of official inclusion policy won’t have much practical purpose for transgender women who, I suspect, will now choose to boycott the store.

Unlike the case of the Toronto woman who went to the Ontario Human Rights Commission after a Muslim barber refused to cut her hair, this situation is not one of competing human rights. But like that case, Singh wasn’t left without options — she ended up going to another boutique, buying a wedding gown, and got married on April 29. There are lots of places to cut your hair and lots of places to buy a gown, and unfortunately, some of them are run by people who deny customers service for arguably bigoted reasons. You can set loose the bureaucracy on them, or you can shame them, and move on.